You Cannot Feel Yourself Growing

Read

Romans 8:28-30 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified."

Think

There is a photo of you somewhere from two years ago that makes you physically wince. The hair. The pose. The caption, mostly the caption.

But here is the strange part. At the time, you thought it was good. You looked at it, you approved it, you posted it on purpose. Which means the version of you reading this right now has changed enough to be embarrassed by somebody you used to be, and you never once felt it happening.

Nobody experiences growth in real time. You only ever see it looking backward.

That is worth knowing, because it is the reason so many students give up on their walk with God about a month after they get serious about it. You expect to feel different. You wake up on a Tuesday, you still snapped at your sister, you still went back to the thing you promised God you were done with, and you conclude that nothing is actually changing. So you quit.

Paul is writing to people in exactly that spot, and verse 29 tells them what God is actually up to.

God is conforming you to the image of his Son. Read that again. The goal is not to make you comfortable. The goal is not a smooth life or a successful one or even a happy one. The goal is to make you like Jesus.

That is the answer to the question this whole week keeps circling. Who are you becoming? God already has an answer, and he has been working on it since before you knew his name.

And it usually shows up in ways too small to notice. The patience you did not have last year. The apology you would never have made in seventh grade. The joke that everybody around you laughed at and you just did not find funny anymore, and you could not explain why. That is not you getting boring. That is a slow, real change in what you love.

Verse 28 deserves an honest word too, because it gets misused constantly. "In all things God works for the good of those who love him" does not mean everything that happens to you is good. Paul is not saying your parents' divorce is good. He is not saying the diagnosis is good, or the friend who walked away, or the thing that happened that you have never told anybody about. Some things are just bad.

What he is saying is that God is able to take even those things and use them in the project of making you like his Son. That is different. It is harder and it is more honest, and it does not require you to pretend you are fine.

You also cannot hear your own voice the way everybody else hears it. Record yourself and it sounds wrong, every time, because you have only ever heard it from the inside. The same thing is true about your growth. The people around you can usually see God working in you long before you can.

And look at the last word of verse 30. Glorified. Past tense. Paul is talking about something that has not happened yet, and he writes about it like it already did, because God is that certain about how this ends. He already declared you not guilty. He already sees the finished version.

So if God is genuinely making you like Jesus, and he is, then something has already started in you that you have not given him any credit for. What is it?

Apply

Ask what they see – Ask two people who know you well, a parent, a leader, or a close friend, one question this week: "What is one way you have seen me change in the last year?" Write down what they say, and thank God for it out loud.

Pray

God, most days I do not feel any different. I mess up in the same ways over and over and it makes me wonder if anything is really happening. Help me trust that you are working even when I cannot see it. Make me like Jesus, even when the process is slower than I want and I get impatient with myself. In Jesus' name. Amen.